Gio Ponti and Richard-Ginori

For the novice Ponti, Richard-Ginori is a place of training; an experience through which he develops his first thoughts on industry, decorative art, and domestic furnishings, not just ceramics; an adventure that fascinates him, revealing along the way his vocation as a promoter of the arts, a prelude to the founding of the magazine Domus.

A convinced advocate of high-quality serial production, at Richard-Ginori Ponti interprets the role of artistic director with exceptional sensitivity also for everything concerning the brand identity and product presentation.

In terms of quantity, quality, and production consistency, there is no case comparable to that of Gio Ponti in the Déco ceramics landscape. The vastness of the assortment was made possible by the meeting of the young architect’s talent and an industrial giant such as Richard-Ginori at the time. Ponti was responsible only for the art ceramics, but in 1922 the company operated five factories and produced all types of ceramic items, from electrotechnical insulators to more affordable strong earthenware.

This superproduction can be explained not only by Ponti’s overwhelming creative vein and the relentless spur of the biennials in Monza and other contemporary exhibitions, but also by his openness to collaboration with other artists and his desire to diversify the offerings to reach an ever-wider audience. A constant element in his work is the commitment to creating a comprehensive, organic catalog capable of satisfying all needs and also offering unusual items, such as herms menu holders or small tree-shaped flower holders to decorate the table.

Ponti redesigns traditional Italian motifs in a modern key, ranging from archaeology to architecture, starting from the repertoire of the Manifattura Ginori itself. He is not guided by the game of citation for its own sake, but by the desire to create a style with an unmistakably Italian identity, making his ceramics unique and competitive on the international market. His ability to breathe new life into an ancient subject—whether derived from a bronze, a mosaic, a fresco, or a coin—is invariably surprising. Ponti synthesizes the contours of the figures and dynamically animates their poses with the skill of a choreographer, weaving architectural patterns with refined chromatics that, with unsurpassable lightness, organize the surfaces like imaginary metaphysical stage sets. He assigns suggestive titles to his inventions, evoking situations, characters, and places that stem from a shared cultural heritage but are undeniably original. His onomastic genius and the irony of the titles (the obscure early Christian martyrs Apollonia, Emerenziana, and Balbina, for example, inspire some of the names chosen for Le mie donne) are an essential ingredient of the charm of his ceramics.

Ponti’s porcelains have simple shapes and smooth surfaces, ideal for featuring figurative decorations; some graphic ideas can become raised patterns, especially for the earthenware and grès of S. Cristoforo, but in general, the architect prefers forms that impose as few constraints as possible on the application of his designs, often conceived as decomposable families adaptable to different objects such as La conversazione classica and La passeggiata archeologica.

To achieve all this, Ponti relies on the skill of the technicians and decorators and the experience of Luigi Tazzini (1871-1938), head of the artistic department at Doccia, to whom he gives precise instructions. Most of Ponti’s letters preserved in the Archive of the Museo Ginori are addressed to him, and they include drawings or simple sketches that Tazzini uses to produce prototypes and samples.

Regarding the plates from the series Le mie donne, on May 15, 1924 Ponti writes: "Let the architectures even touch the clouds a little, it’s not a bad thing" 

Recommendations for Vittorio Faggi, the best maiolica painter, are not lacking: 

“make the background architectures of the plate well contrasted and also with striped shadows (in the manner of the foliage of the vase in the gallery)” [May 5, 1924].  

Periodically Ponti travels from Milan to Florence and personally checks the success of his ideas, making any necessary changes and requesting new tests until the desired result is achieved. Sometimes he accepts suggestions from Tazzini, as in the case of the decoration of the handles of the bonbonnière Omaggio agli snob: 

“better that one made by you for Paris with white and gold handle than the one I ordered with all-gold handles. So make the repetitions like the Paris one” [May 19, 1925].

For the modeling of the sculptural groups, Ponti involved young artist friends, such as Salvatore Saponaro (1888-1970) and Fausto Melotti (1901-1986), whom he met in the lively Milanese artistic scene of those years; for the production at Doccia, he turned to the students of the sculpture class at the Royal Institute of Art in Florence, led by the master Libero Andreotti, and from 1926 mainly to Italo Griselli (1880-1958). Whenever possible, he personally followed the various stages of model creation:

“Sunday I am in Florence at 7:30; at 9 I am with the sculptor Griselli; [...] in the afternoon still with Griselli if necessary or in some museum; Monday I will be with you at Doccia and will leave Monday evening” [December 3, 1926]

At other times, it is Tazzini who reports to him on the progress of the work:

“Last night I visited my friend Griselli; the Pierrot is very beautiful and the deer is also of the very beautiful Grisellian type; he also prepared a group of the deer hunt […] all these works are in plasticine and will now be reproduced in plaster and finely retouched” [August 30, 1929].

Small porcelain sculptures are reproduced in series and offered at affordable prices; according to a 1930 price list, for example, The Grapes of the Promised Land, modeled by Italo Griselli from a design by Ponti, was available at 127 lire for the white version and 169 lire for the gold-highlighted one.

Attention to price often emerges in the correspondence, particularly after 1925, when Ponti began designing original small paperweights (the book model, for example, cost 12.75 lire) and thinking about simple decorations to apply to inkpots, ashtrays, inkwells, cigarette cases, and other easily sold objects. With the same approach, he studied simpler variants of existing decorations, such as the Velesca vase, originally equipped with a rich finish on the foot and inside, and later reformulated more sparingly.

Ponti also ensures that the objects presented at exhibitions are available for sale and ready in sufficient quantities to be sent to stores. 

An indefatigable worker, he oversees every aspect of the product's life, from conception to promotion and sale, convinced that the bond between art and industry is a necessary condition for the creation of a truly modern style and taste.  His experience will become a reference model for the years to come, paving the way for the development of Italian design. 

• A. Pansera, Paolo Portoghesi, Gio Ponti alla Manifattura di Doccia, Milano 1982
• L. Manna, Gio Ponti. Le maioliche, Milano 2000  
• Gio Ponti. Il fascino della ceramica / Fascination for ceramics, curated by D. Matteoni, Cinisello Balsamo (Milano) 2011
• Gio Ponti e la Richard-Ginori:  una corrispondenza inedita, curated by Livia Frescobaldi, Oliva Rucellai, Mantova 2015
• Gio Ponti. La collezione del Museo Richard-Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia / The collection of the Museo Richard-Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia, curated by Livia Frescobaldi, Maria Teresa Giovannini, Oliva Rucellai, Falciano 2019